Big Budget, Bad acting, little story...nothing in Hollywood ever changes

Rating: 6/10 (19 May 2005)

The Normandy landings was one of the biggest military operations every undertaken. Capturing this in a single movie would be a great challenge. Unlike "saving private Ryan", "The longest day" is the story of the landings, not a story set during the landings.
It is perhaps overly ambitious, but when you consider that it was produced by the same person who was also making Cleopatra, then you will understand why it was attempted.
What we get is a lot of bad acting, as each big name star, who was paid only a small amount of money, tried their best to say what they hoped would be the most memorable line from the film.
There are some absolutely stunning visuals, great expansive continual shots of a different battles. These are interspersed with rather cheap, cheesy studio scenes.
My feeling is that the humour was forced in to make up for the stilted dramatic dialog. The result is rather uneven, but on par with the other big budget blockbusters of the time.
Like the big budget movies of today, it is both good and bad. It is not a classic. Some people praise this type of movie because it portrays the history of a moment, rather than impose a story in a historical context (it isn't saving private Ryan or pearl harbour). But ultimately the canvass is too big and the brush too small.
It also fails to provide a lot of the real facts for why things happened. One for people who like good old fashioned war movies.